Real estate divides

COVID-19 has already created a stark bifurcation in the real estate world between assets that are enabled by technology to make the return to the workplace seamless and as attractive as working from home, and older properties that cannot be adapted to the new digital age.

The best of these assets also achieve world-class sustainability ratings, appealing not only to a generation of occupiers, who due to the pandemic have become more environmentally and socially conscious, but also to institutional investors for whom the ESG agenda has rocketed in importance.

It was striking that in the space of three days in May. The Financial Times and Bloomberg, both highlighted this trend.

The FT’s George Hammond wrote a whole page feature, `The developers still betting on the London office market’ and Bloomberg’s Jack Sidders’ long read was headlined `Skyscrapers rising next to vacant towers market new City of London’.

But it’s not just offices that are being eyed up hungrily by global real estate investors.